Epps v Esso Petroleum Co Ltd [1973] 1 WLR 1071

A house and adjoining filling station were separated by a boundary which had been moved to include a strip with the house. Later dealings with the filling station mistakenly included that strip in its registered title. Esso acquired the filling station as a subsequent registered proprietor. The purchasers of the house believed that the strip belonged to them and sought correction of the register. They relied in part on use of the strip for parking by themselves and their predecessors. The court considered both the historical statutory grounds for rectification and whether that activity amounted to actual occupation.

Did irregular parking on the disputed strip amount to actual occupation, and did the circumstances justify rectification against the subsequent registered proprietor under the legislation then applicable?

The court rejected the claim that the parking established actual occupation of the relevant land. The activity was not a sufficiently settled occupation of an identified area: placing a car on a larger strip at uncertain times was not enough on these facts. The court also considered the protection afforded to the later registered proprietor and declined the requested rectification under the then-applicable regime. The decision does not establish that parking can never be evidence of occupation. Its reasoning concerns the nature and continuity of the particular use, and its rectification analysis must be kept within the historical statutory framework rather than carried unchanged into modern registered land law.

Intermittent parking on an undefined portion of a larger strip need not amount to actual occupation. Occupation depends on the character of the land and use; Epps should not be treated as a universal rule excluding parking or as a complete statement of modern register alteration law.

Epps demonstrates the factual character of actual occupation and the need to identify the land said to be occupied. It also illustrates why a register-mistake dispute cannot be resolved merely by producing an earlier conveyance. The case arose under the Land Registration Act 1925; modern alteration and rectification use the 2002 Act. Students should separate evidence of title, physical occupation and the statutory conditions governing correction, rather than treating any one of them as determinative of the others.